Tag Archives: Ploughshares Fund

On issue after issue over a potential nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration has caved.

An analysis from the Foreign Policy Initiative‘s Tzvi Khan published June 29 laid out the myriad ways the U.S. has fallen short, misled or simply kowtowed on sanctions, uranium enrichment, Iran’s breakout capacity, whether Iran could be a good actor and more.

On April 2, when Obama touted the framework agreement and “historic understanding” between Iran and world powers, he claimed “Iran has also agreed to the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history.”

Obama also repeatedly said he would not take any option off the table when it came to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, until an interview he gave with Israeli television May 29 which effectively signaled to Tehran that was no longer something they had to fret.

“A military solution will not fix it, even if the United States participates,” Obama said. “It would temporarily slow down an Iranian nuclear program, but it will not eliminate it.”

Secretary of State John Kerry has also had a number of demands or claims walked back by his own remarks or those of others, for instance on the potential dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program.

“I don’t think that any of us thought we were just imposing these sanctions for the sake of imposing them,” Kerry said Dec. 10, 2013, while testifying before Congress. “We did it because we knew that it would hopefully help Iran dismantle its nuclear program. That was the whole point of the regime.”

But Obama himself said during the April 2 announcement that “Iran is not going to simply dismantle its program because we demand it to do so,” and the framework indicated Iran would not have to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure.

Also, after Kerry first said that as part of the nonproliferation treaty in November 2013 that the U.S. did not recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium, he said less than a month later to Congress, “I can’t tell you they might not have some enrichment.”

In an April interview with PBS, Kerry said the U.S. would not accept Iran failing to disclose the military dimensions of its nuclear program, saying flatly, “It will be done. If there’s going to be a deal, it will be done.”

Sure enough, during a press appearance June 16, Kerry told State Department reporters the U.S. already knew everything Iran had done.

“We have no doubt,” he said. “We have absolute knowledge with respect to the certain military activities they were engaged in. What we’re concerned about is going forward.”

You get the idea. The U.S. has also made conflicting statements on Iran’s ballistic missiles, Iran’s underground enrichment facility at Fordow, and, to the chagrin of spokeswoman Marie Harf, Iran’s failure to comply with the Joint Plan of Action as it increased its nuclear stockpile over the past 18 months.

As another deadline comes and goes, it’s unclear how much more Iran might be able to get before a final deal is potentially struck.

The administration has its own sense of deadline, though, as Kerry put it. It certainly has its own sense of what constitutes good high-stakes bargaining, too.

A network of pro-Iran advocates are uniting behind a new campaign aimed at killing bipartisan legislation meant to increase sanctions on Tehran should it cheat on a recently inked nuclear accord.

The latest bid to kill sanctions in Congress is being led by the Iran Project, a little known group that is deeply tied to, and funded by, some of Tehran’s top U.S. advocates.

The Iran Project went live on Monday with an anti-sanctions letter signed by a who’s who of liberal former U.S. officials, many of whom have long advocated to roll back sanctions on Iran and increase diplomacy with the rogue regime.

The letter, which quickly gained traction in some foreign policy circles, urged Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.)—one of the chief architects of the new Iran sanctions bill—to back off his bid and let the bill die.

Liberal outlets such as the Huffington Post and others have also gone after Menendez in a bid to force him to abandon the bill, which is hotly opposed by the White House but supported by 48 senators.

The Iran Project claims that the new sanctions bill would “move the U.S. closer to war” with Iran.

The missive is signed by former ambassadors Thomas Pickering and Ryan Crocker as well as by former National Intelligence Officer Paul Pillar and several other foreign policy experts known for taking a soft line on Iran.

TEL AVIV – Secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel sits on the small board of a peace fund that finances an international “crisis management” group that long has petitioned the Algerian government to cease “excessive” military activities against al-Qaida-linked jihadists, WND has learned.

The organization, the International Crisis Group, or ICG, called on Algeria to grant legitimacy to the very al-Qaida-linked group reportedly behind the kidnapping of about 40 foreign hostages, including several Americans, at a natural-gas field in Algeria.

Two Americans escaped today unharmed as Algerian special forces launched a rescue operation, according to the state news agency. At least six people were killed, the Associated Press reported. Dozens more remained unaccounted for, including Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians, Japanese, Algerians, at least one American and the captors.

ICG petitioned for the Islamist group to participate in the Algerian government.

The Ploughshares Fund identifies itself as a “publicly supported foundation that funds, organizes and innovates projects to realize a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons.”

The fund calls itself “the largest grant-making foundation in the U.S. focusing exclusively on peace and security issues.”

Since its founding in 1981 by San Francisco philanthropist and activist Sally Lilienthal, Ploughshares says it has awarded many hundreds of grants “whose aggregate value exceeded $60 million.”

The fund is in turn financed by a small number of foundations, including Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Buffett Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation.

One of the groups funded by Ploughshares is ICG.

Soros himself funds ICG directly via his Open Society and also sits on ICG’s executive committee which consists of eight members.

ICG long has petitioned for the reformation of the Algerian government and for the inclusion of Islamist political parties, including two groups that seek to turn Algeria into an Islamic state.

In a July 2004 ICG report obtained by WND, ICG calls on the Algerian government to curb military action against al-Qaida-affiliated organizations, particularly the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, currently known as Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb is reportedly behind the hostage crisis currently under way in Algeria.

The ICG report also called for Algeria to open talks with an armed Islamic terrorist group known as Houmat Daawa Salafia, or HDS.

ICG names the two Islamic groups in its recommendations to the Algerian government.

“Give top priority to ending the remaining armed movements, mainly the GSPC and HDS, through a political, security, legal and diplomatic strategy,” states the ICG report.

“Avoid excessive reliance on military means and do not allow these movements’ purported links to al-Qaida to rule out a negotiated end to their campaigns,” continued ICG’s recommendation to the Algerian government.

ICG has issued at least six other reports recommending Algeria transition to a democracy that will allow the participation of the Islamic groups seeking to create a Muslim caliphate.

After Algeria’s president, Bouteflika, won more than 80 percent of the vote against Islamic opposition groups in 2004, Robert Malley, an ICG associate, recommended, “Rather than exclude all his opponents from the policy making process, he could empower them.”

ICG’s Malley was an adviser to Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. He resigned after it was exposed he had communicated with Hamas. WND reported Malley long had petitioned for dialogue with Hamas.

WND also reported ICG has petitioned for the Egyptian government to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.